In our ongoing series on Gifts-in-kind (GIK), today’s post covers how GIK resource fits into the broader work of community development programming. Specifically we’ll look at:

* Uses of GIK, including as match for grants
* Standards for managing GIK
* Evaluations of projects with direct provision of goods

Uses of GIK

World Vision operates in nearly 100 countries with 1,600 development programs and 1,200 sector projects that integrate education, health, economic development, advocacy, microfinance, agriculture, and water and sanitation. Our programs go through intensive assessments and planning, beginning with a country macro-assessment and strategy and continuing with local area assessments, a comprehensive design document, baseline survey, and regular audits and evaluations. These steps follow World Vision’s design, monitoring, and evaluation (DME) methodology and tools, which are all available online.

This post was written in response to Response to GIK discussion, and 100,000 reasons to love the Super Bowl

The intent of this post is to provide a basic overview of World Vision’s strategy and structure and our U.S. GIK operations. Over the following week we will address the following key issues:

* The financial costs and benefits of sending GIK overseas.
* The use of GIK in development programming.
* Evaluations of projects with direct provision of goods, including GIK.
* Standards for GIK implementation and accounting, including fair market value calculations
* The influence of overhead rate calculations on organizational decisions.
* The use of GIK as grant match.

World Vision’s strategy and structure

In 2006 World Vision went through a process of refining our strategy.....